The conviction of Shane Atkinson in the High Court in Christchurch for spamming was a long time in coming. In 2003, when I wrote about Atkinson as a huge "make big penis fast" spammer, the reaction from the public fed up with huge amounts of offensive spam was immense. They let Shane know exactly what they thought of his business practices, but at the time, there was nothing to be done in New Zealand legally, as the we had no Anti-Spam laws.

The Anti-Spam Compliance Unit at the NZ Department of Internal Affairs has done a great job in following the Atkinson money trail, leading to the successful prosecution. They worked out that the spam was flogging Herbal King, Elite Herbal, Express Herbal whatever penis pills, as made by Tulip Lab of India with the business itself being the Genbucks Affiliate Programme. Genbucks Ltd of Mauritius ran that scheme, and it can't have been easy to connect the Atkinsons to those overseas entities.

We'll see how much impact the penalising of the Atkinsons will have though. Given the huge volume of spam currently and the apparent ability of Lance Atkinson to stump up $100,000, you have to wonder how much of a deterrent the penalties in the Act are.

Comments policy
All comments posted on this blog are the copyright and responsibility of the submitters in question. Comments commercial and promotional in nature are not allowed. Please ensure that your comments are on topic and refrain from making personal remarks.

This blog is hosted by Geekzone. Report this post. Contents are property and copyright of the author, or licensed. Geekzone®